Sex and Rage

"Eve Babitz’s 1979 novel Sex and Rage – reissued this year – is that third drink you stay out for, knowing you’re going to regret it the next morning (but in the best way possible). Babitz knows the ‘70s Los Angeles scene intimately because she lived it – and lived to tell the tale. Her writing is a refreshing antithesis to Joan Didion’s bleak vision of L.A., and her experiences blow through this book like hot wind in the jacaranda trees. Sex and Rage isn’t as sharp as the books Babitz made her name on (Eve’s Hollywood; Slow Days, Fast Company), but it’s nonetheless a mesmerizing account of a young woman grappling with addiction and balance in her career and life."

"The book made me want to move back to Los Angeles, get a tan, drink too much, smoke too much, obsess much too much."